The Zeroth Law
by concretebrush
Summary: From a Tumblr Prompt: "The Ministry of Magic builds the wizarding world's first female android in the hopes that she can lure in and capture elusive hacker Draco Malfoy." AU with magic and computers


AN: I saw this prompt on tumblr, "The Ministry of Magic builds the wizarding world's first female android in hopes she can lure in and capture elusive hacker Draco Malfoy." ( /post/86955467942/futuristic-harry-potter-au-the-ministry-of) And then the plot bunnies wouldn't leave me be...so here I am.

Title comes from Isaac Asimov's _I, Robot_

* * *

Beep. Beep.

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep.

"Oh for Merlin's sake," the tech advisor groused, "This is the second time this week. I can't deal with this."

Padma Patil rushed into the office, "What's going on? Why has my firewall alarm gone haywire?"

"Malfoy left us another present," snarled the perpetually angry tech advisor.

"Malfoy?" asked Padma in confusion, "He never tripped our sensors before. Why would he start now?"

"No, no it's not that, he broke in a while ago, from the looks of the file deletion, I'd say about a month ago, it's only now that the virus has hit our firewall's internal trigger. But, I'd say he reached his goal regardless. We lost nearly all the files on the Malfoy family."

Padma rubbed her eyes hard, "Please, _please_ tell me we backed that up somewhere else."

Ginny piped up from her computer at the other end of the room, "Nope. This _was_ the backup. We didn't think we needed to back up the backup-"

Padma interrupted, "By now I think we know when we are dealing with Malfoy we need to cover even our imaginary bases, people, yeah?"

Everyone nodded.

"Good. Get on that. Start backing up everything we still have left on a _physical_ hard drives. I can't believe none of you thought to do that earlier."

Ginny held up a hand in the universal gesture of hold-on-I'm-not-done, "Not only did he wipe both sites—that wasn't the worst of it—I'm running a systems check right now, and it seems that he's...managed to erase the entirety of our Azkaban archive system. How the fuck is that even _possible_?"

Patil growled into her headset. During times like these, she didn't know if she was thankful or not for her direct line to the Minister of Magic. As the head of SecureIT ™, the largest, government-contracted virtual security company in the world, it was her job to communicate with Harry Potter, known colloquially as "political savior of wizardkind."

In a time of upheaval, the bespectacled, scarred young man, stepped into the power vacuum left by Dumbledore's and Voldemort's sudden deaths. The two opposing factions were most closely comparable to muggle political parties. Voldemort represented the pureblooded elite and Dumbledore, everyone else. In a bizarre twist of irony, both party leaders perished on a shared plane heading for aviation safety talks with the muggle prime minister. They were purported to be negotiating a top-secret new law when the plane's fuselage had exploded. Unfortunately for the upcoming Minister of Magic election, searchboats trawling through the oceans under their last known location had yet to find anything.

It was during this time that Harry Potter, Dumbledore's protege, but Voldemort's son, rose up to take charge. With pureblood but muggle-loving Ronald Weasley as his closest advisor, he managed to unite the two groups in an uneasy truce. This was an age of compromise of duality and finally, most hopefully, of peace.

First class of Merlin laureate Harry Potter felt a massive stress headache coming on.

"You told me this wasn't possible."

Padma fidgeted a little but maintained eye contact.

"We didn't think it was possible, sir. It should have been impossible! We just don't know how Malfoy did it. He must have access to more advanced technology or something, because the stuff he's been using..." Padma's hands fluttered in front of her, trying to find the words to explain just how unbelievable this Malfoy was, "we've just never seen it before!"

Harry Potter took of his glasses and rubbed his eyes, "You call me up at five A.M. to tell me Wizarding England's entire virtual security has been breached. Please, let's have some coffee at least before we must continue."

Padma looked down at her lap, "I'm sorry, sir."

Harry Potter had a gift for inadvertently making everyone around him feel guilty. Padma could attest to this.

"Padma, I think it's time I showed you something. This is still classified but I think after Malfoy's recent stunt, it's time to pull out the long wands, or so they say."

Padma sat forward in her chair.

"You know the infamous aviation accident, right?"

Padma nodded.

"Well, what they were discussing with the Prime Minister that day, was not in fact, air safety protocol, it was the secret breakthrough of muggle AI technology."

Padma's eyes fluttered wide and in a hushed and reverent voice she whispered, "...Artificial Intelligence?"

Harry Potter nodded his head once, decisively, "The program has the mind of an average thirty-year old adult, and is the first device to truly pass the Turing Test. Twenty-nine out of thirty people thought the program was a real human after holding conversations with it."

Padma's jaw, still hanging somewhere around her knees, dropped even further.

"Yes, as you can see, this news may cause some degree of...panic. We did not want to burden the public with this so soon in the wake of the tragedy. But Dumbledore and Voldemort, may their souls rest in peace, were both intending to buy the program from the muggles. They envisioned it as some sort of weapon. I mean, imagine-"

"Oh...the espionage opportunities would be priceless! The military options! You've got a robot that can think like a man, you can do almost anything!"

Harry Potter held up a reproachful hand, and shot Padma a mildly disgruntled look for her interruption. "Yes, and although they never got that chance, I did."

"You...you bought the AI program?"

Harry Potter nodded, "I think this Malfoy situation would be a great testing ground for the capacities of AI intelligence. I'm making you the handler of our new AI personality."

Padma's eyes burned brightly, as if with fever.

"Yes, sir. I won't let you down sir."

Harry Potter looked faintly amused, "Good. Good."

"Sir, is the personality based off of a living person?"

"Yes, I believe her name is," Harry Potter shuffled around the papers on his desk, "Aha, hm...Herminny? Hermy-one?...something like that...Granger. Now go talk to Shacklebolt. He has the information you need on the AI."


End file.
